It's Stank Versus Stink

If you ask most mothers of teen-aged sons how his room smells, you'll probably hear gagging noises, see faces contorted in horror, and hear plenty of colorful descriptive verbs. (Which honestly might not even do it justice.) I say most because I'm sure there's been at least one teenager over the years who doesn't want to smell like gym socks wrapped in Limburger cheese, which is what I imagine that funk emanating from his room is likened to. That or roadkill with a side of ass sweat.

And it seems like every mother of a teen-aged son has at least one horror story about that smell or how they've gone about eliminating it. Whether you've bought prescription strength deodorant and odor eaters or if you just burned down their room after they left for college and started anew, something went on. It's even been lamented by friends and colleagues who either commiserate if they have sons or comment on how they're grateful to only have daughters.

Insert maniacal laughter here. Wipe tears from eyes after laughing so hard. Try to stop laughing before you wet yourself.

You're not exempt from the scents of teenagerdom just because you have a girl. It's just different. Where boys have stank, girls have stink. Usually in the form of perfumes, lotions, body sprays, deodorants, and bath salts, gels, beads, or bubbles. While this doesn't sound terrible, keep in mind that there is an unwritten rule that a teenage girl must have every single one of these scents on her person at one time. It's as if her body is a yankee candle store, a bath and body works, and a fabric softener aisle all rolled into one. That is how strong the smell is.

If you think it's bad with just one teenage girl, multiplying them could quite literally kill you. Every year when the daughter has her birthday party sleepover, the entire back portion of the house smells like 4 different combinations of body lotions, sprays, perfumes, and hair products. It's so strong that your eyes start watering 5 feet before you enter the hallway, which is already 20 feet from her bedroom door.

You know what the perfect fix would be for this situation? Stick your teen aged kids in a room together so they'd cancel each other out. Oh, but you can't because they're different genders dammit. So one room smells like something died in there after wiping it's feet in a sulfur swamp, and the other smells like a French whorehouse. (I don't know why it has to be French. I'd imagine all whorehouses would smell the same, don't you think?) It's like watching wrestling. "In this corner, we have heavyweight stench weighing in at "Good Lord, what IS that smell?" and in the other corner, the rookie smell weighing in at "Oh My God, someone open up a window STAT!"

So the moral of the story is this: If you have teenagers, move to a climate where you can have the windows open all the time. And if you can't, invest in nose plugs.

She could be the poster child (poster Mom?) of parents with teenagers.